Every Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon in the basement of the Exley Science Center, 15 Wesleyan students sitting at computers radiate with creative energy and focus.

This is the meeting place of a student forum designed to train interested students in how to take footage for TV, lead by Luis Miguel Henao ’04 and Jonathan Swartz ’04, and supervised by the Manager of Instructional Media Services and visiting physics professor, Heric Flores.

The student forum, named “Sound, Light, Recording and Computers: Producing Electronic Multimedia,” was offered for the first time this semester and includes all the elements of light, sound and editing. Henao and Swartz said there were more than forty applicants for the forum, but they had to choose only 15 and made their decisions based on student experience, creativity and time commitment.

Ultimately, the goal of the student forum is to produce enough footage for a weekend of TV, which they hope to air the weekend of March 26-28 on a university-owned narrow cast channel. This means that only televisions on the Wesleyan campus, including wood-frame houses, would have access to the station.

Student efforts at creating an outlet for expression in the TV medium have been made before, said Henao and Swartz.

“This has been in the works for a good year and a half,” said Henao.

Andrea Wozny ’05 and Camille Zahniser ’04 initiated communication with the administration regarding student desire for a Wesleyan TV program. Both of them are students in the forum and members and representatives of a student TV group called Underverse that has close ties to the forum and receives funding from the WSA.

“[Zahniser and Wozny] were the ones that got the ball rolling with the administration. [Swartz] and I, as we work at ITS, we were the tech guys who could make it happen,” Henao said.

According to Henao and Swartz, ever since Comcast, Wesleyan’s current cable television provider, made a contract with the university in the 1990’s, the possibility of having a student television station has existed.

During the student forum class that met last Wednesday, instead of editing footage on the computer or listening to a lecture presented by professor Flores on the physics of sound, students shared their work for the first time, watching each other’s footage projected onto a large wall screen.

One student shouted from the back, “why are we watching it on the big screen? This is TV, we need a small screen.”

From watching the students’ footage, it’s quite clear that most of their work takes place outside the classroom – from a Vine Street kitchen where sushi is being made to the home environs of a little girl who plays with her hamster.

To film, students are allowed to use camera equipment borrowed from the computer store in the Science Center and many students own their own equipment.

At this level, as a contained student forum, there are no real concerns about cost. But this group is not content to simply share their work among themselves. They want a campus- wide audience, and some of them wouldn’t mind an international audience. The edited footage from students in the forum is hoped to air at the end of March, but in order to operate a TV station, it would be necessary to buy a special infrastructure that could cost thousands of dollars.

This group is enthusiastic and driven, and they soon want to see wider campus participation in this effort towards creating a Wesleyan TV station.

“Once this pilot program is off the ground, we hope to open it up to anyone who would like to submit stuff,” said student forum member Nikhil Melnechuk ’07.

Melnechuk was surprised that Wesleyan didn’t have a TV station, particularly given the fact that so many Wesleyan alumni work in the television / media industry. One of the more experienced students in the TV forum, Melnechuk started working with TV when he was 8 years old, producing a comedy show with older kids on a local public cable station in his hometown of Amherst, MA.

“It’s important for Wesleyan to have a TV station for two reasons, I think,” Melnechuk said. “To train students with hands-on experience who might be interested in getting into the world of television, and to provide kids with another outlet for artistic expression.”

Not all students in the forum have the depth of experience that Melnechuk has.

“I’ve always been interested in TV and media, but I’m more of an idea person than a computer person – so I was taught from square one and now I can edit.”

Students are very excited to show their work to a campus-wide audience, and they want to inspire their viewers.

“I hope people are in a frenzy and that they have their own visions,” Swartz said.